Sunday, September 29, 2013

It's been nearly a decade since Roger Penrose wrote "The Road to Reality." This weekend, I finally finished the book. (I had read individual chapters here and there, but I finally found the time to sit down and read the whole book.) The reason that I finally forced myself to read the whole book is that I wanted to see how many of his speculations in 2004 are still valid today. Also, Roger Penrose has some very interesting ways of describing mathematical theories, and he recognizes the ad hoc and incomplete nature of the current "Standard Model," but doesn't shy away from stating his negative opinions about supersymmetry and string theory.

The book is a breath-taking overview of fundamental physics and geometry from the perspective of a Platonist. What's refreshing about the book is the fact that it's a history of physics and mathematics from the view point of a Platonist (i.e. somebody who believes that mathematics...and perhaps beauty and morality...are eternal, unchanging, and exist eternal to the material and mental world.)

What makes the book so refreshing to read is that, in the decade since this book was published, the "physics media" (i.e. Sean Carroll, Lawrence Krauss, Brian Greene, Martin Rees. Leonard Susskind, and others) have attempted to dismantle neo-Platonism and a belief in an unchanging, external world of absolutes. Post-modernism infected most of the social sciences in the 50s-70s, but physics and mathematics were still holding strong against post-modernism and relativism until the 2000s, at which point in time, the "physics media" began hyping string theory, supersymmetry, multi-verses, universes from nothing, randomness, inflation, time symmetric laws of physics, and the quantum randomness. Luckily, as "natural" string theories and supersymmetries have faced an timely demise due to falsification by high-energy particle collider experiments, it's easier to see that the emperor has no clothes.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

I'm writing this post because I'm in a state of disbelief over recent political changes taking place in Australia. What I mean by recent political changes is that the new prime minister of Australia has removed science and environmental ministers from his cabinet and has ended funded for an apolitical climate change working group. While I am a firm believer in limited government, I find the recent moves in Australia (along with some of the anti-science rhetoric in the tea party in the US) to be counter-productive to the cause of freedom. The goal of this post is to explain my beliefs on limited government (i.e. what should be funded by governments and what should not funded) and state my hope for the future of the Libertarian Party in the US.

My belief is that governments should fund public goods and should refrain from funding non-pubic goods. The strict economic definition of a public good is a good that is "non-excludable" and "non-rivalrous." The classic example of a public good is the military. National defense is "non-excludable" because there is no way to limit the benefits of a strong national defense only to those people who pay for the service. Also, national defense "non-rivalrous" because it does not get consumed (in the same way that hamburgers can be consumed.)

Another example of a public good is basic scientific knowledge. Basic scientific knowledge can't be consumed and is not "less true" because somebody else learns the knowledge. It is also non-excludable because the knowledge can be transmitted on the internet with near-zero cost to anybody who is interested. It is virtually impossible for the scientists doing the research to keep the knowledge a secret because once they share the information, it can easily be put onto the internet and will spread like a wildfire. (Though, it should be pointed out that many forms of applied knowledge are not public goods. For example, knowledge of the amount of oil&gas in the ground in a specific location can be "consumed" and can be "less true" when somebody else learns this knowledge because this knowledge is not a constant with time.)

Saturday, September 21, 2013

This week, the Q-weak experiment at the Jefferson Lab published some initial results from an experiment in which they scattered electrons off of protons in the form of liquid hydrogen. The experiment involved sending in electrons of one spin, measuring the scattering angles, and then sending in electrons of opposite spin to measure the different in the scattering angles due to the difference spin of the electrons. The weak nuclear force caused differences in the scattering of electrons off of protons depending on the spin of the electrons because the weak nuclear force is parity asymmetric. From this difference in scattering, the researchers were able to measure the weak nuclear coupling constant for electrons and protons. This was the first time that researchers have isolated the weak charge of the proton at low collision energies. The value of this coupling constant is in good agreement with the Standard Model of physics. The figure below (Figure 2 from their paper) shows the asymmetry of scattering (due to the weak nuclear force) as a function of the scattering energy squared. Notice in this figure that the value for the asymmetry at zero energy (i.e. near room temperature energies) is not zero. This means that the weak nuclear force has a non-zero effect at room temperature for electron-proton scattering.

Three Worlds, Three Mysteries

The Goal of this Blog

My goal is to communicate how life can expand and grow, both on this planet and on others. To grow, we need to obtain a large rate of return on investment from our power plants, so a main focus of this blog is on the economics of electricity generation and vehicle transportation.To summarize, the goal of life is to expand. Life requires mechanical or electro-chemical work to survive, and to grow, it requires a large, positive rate of return on work invested.

In other words, the purpose of a power plant is to make more power plants, and as quickly as possible.

After a series of posts on the topic of energy policy and economics, I thought that it'd be a good time to take a break and delve back i...

Good quotes

"The [engineer] should be equipped with knowledge of many branches of study and varied kinds of learning, for it is by his judgement that all work done by the other arts is put to test. This knowledge is the child of practice and theory."

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura, (~15 BC)

"The fact that the Standard Model of Physics has just enough complexity to be able to accommodate CP violation does not shed any light on the true nature of this phenomenon, and we feel the conclusion of J. Cronin's 1980 Nobel speech still stands: 'We must continue to seek the origin of the CP symmetry violation by all means at our disposal. [...] We are hopeful, then, that at some eposh, perhaps distant, this cryptic message from nature will be deciphered.' (Cronin, 1981) --Marco Sozzi, 2008, from the Coda of Discrete Symmetries and CP Violation

"Knowledge is power."

"Lastly, I would address one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of Life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity."— Francis Bacon

"Dare to be an optimist."

—Matt Ridley

"Stretch the range of human powers...Give us new metaphors with which to puzzle out our mysteries...Give us pride and higher aspirations...Turn our trash into treasure...Give us goals and meaning...Give us new tools with which we can connect...Validate us in our moments of confusion...Give us new rituals to make sense of our day...Give us new levels of reality...Give us your soul and bare your emotions...Give us new tools of understanding...Turn luxuries into everyday commodities...Warn us of our failings, of our conplacency, or our alternatives and of our dangers...Help us serve a purpose higher than ourselves."

—Howard Bloom, The Genius of the Beast

“Progress is possible only when people believe in the possibilities of growth and change. Races or tribes die out not just when they are conquered and suppressed, but when they accept their defeated condition, become despairing, and lose their excitement about the future.”—Norman Cousins

"If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god."— Napoleon Bonaparte

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."— Anton Chekhov

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance."

"Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter [the Academy]."

— Plato/Socrates

"Perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself..."

— Narrator of Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground

"The physical holds no power over destiny."

—Norman Paperman

"Nature is not solely physical, even though everything in it must depend on the physical. Nature includes not only physical entities but complex material organizations, mathematical lawfulness, possibilities, life, need, behavior, intelligence, purpose, societies, minds, meanings, signs, and knowledge."

— Lawrence Cahoone, "The Orders of Nature"

"All men by nature desire knowledge."— Aristotle

"Worrying is praying for something that you don't want. So stop worrying!"

—Bhagavan Das

"Keep your head above the water and bet on the growth of your country."— Henry Flagler of Standard Oil

"Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds & and the most energetic of characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes & stupefies a people until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid & industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

"Socrates: 'Now, that which imparts truth to the known and the power of knowing to the knower is what I would have you term the idea of good, and this you will deem to be the cause of science, and of truth in so far as the latter becomes the subject of knowledge; beautiful too, as are both truth and knowledge, you will be right in esteeming this other nature as more beautiful than either; and, as in the previous instance, light and sight may be truly said to be like the sun, and yet not the sun, so in this other sphere, science and truth may be deemed to be like the good, but not the good; the good has a place of honor yet higher.'Glaucon: 'What a wonder of beauty that must be, which is the author of science and truth, and yet surpasses them in beauty; for you surely cannot mean to say that pleasure is the good?'

Socrates: 'God forbid, but I may ask you to consider the image in another point of view.'

Glaucon: 'In what point of view?'

Socrates: 'You would say, wouldn't you not, that the sun is not only the author of visibility in all visible things, but of generation and nourishment and growth, though he himself is not generation?'

Glaucon: 'Certainly.'

Socrates: 'In like manner, the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.' "